A picnic lunch at home

Autumn leaves + Maja make for an effective leaf redistribution system.

These sneaky leaves have figured out how to use Maja to gain access to our house

A bespangled Pieter, an indisposed Miekie, and a shorn Maja

Tomorrow is the last day of school for this term. Pieter and his fellow pupils had to dress up in biblical fashion and were treated to an (imitation) meal from that period.

I bought this shirt for Pieter in Mumbai last year. He's refused to wear it until now, when it was pointed out to him that it would suit today's purpose well.

Miekie has a fever (but no other symptoms). So she stayed at home today. She used her pocket money to buy a Monchhichi over the Internet. It was delivered today.

She's named it Kaptein

We tested out a mobile dog grooming service called Ultimutt. They were great and it saves a lot of effort not having to drive her to a salon.

Everything happens in their vehicle

Judging by their equipment I think they might be able to handle my personal grooming requirements too

The bandana is part of the package

A welcome to melck.org and some miscellaneous photos

My small melck domain name collection has just grown by one: I'm now the proud owner of melck.org, which seems to have been abandoned by its previous owner. I'm hopeful that the melck.com cyber-squatter will decide to stop hogging it at some stage, but it's been years of hoping. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with melck.org and melck.co.za but for the time being they pass on emails sent to them to their corresponding melck.net addresses.

Here are a few photos taken today:

Pieter made a replica of Maja during his art class

Pieter and I fetched Miekie after school, as we do on many days

Marisa took a few photos of Neil and me last week:

Even though these were taken last week, Neil has grown so much since then that he looks tiny on these!

Pavlovian Maja

Our clever Maja has a very strong Pavlovian response to the sound of a brown paper bag and can distinguish the sound such a particular bag from other bags.



Well, it's really not much of a surprise because that sort of bag normally contains biltong. And sometimes she's lucky enough to get a piece.

(Actually, she's not the only one in our family with this Pavlovian response...)